The Challenge

Foster Moore, an international software development company based in New Zealand, found themselves in the desirable but challenging phase of rapid business growth. Among the complications they faced were those of escalating cloud costs, plus the operation overhead of managing global user access to cloud instances.

Foster Moore uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for most of their product implementations as well as development. The rising costs also raised questions of user access control to their various AWS environments. Bobby Chan, a System Engineer in the Operational Services Group, said, “on one hand, we were trying to restrict people’s use of AWS for security reasons, but on the other hand we wanted to provide them the freedom of the cloud.”

At first, they attempted to have users turn instances off manually, but this proved troublesome with the dispersed team and the human ability to forget. This also put a lot of pressure on the Operational Services Group, which was solely responsible for identifying and notifying users to turn instances off when not being used.

In addition to management of instances, the financial data available about these AWS instances was limited. Melanie Metcalfe of the Project Support Office – which sits inside Finance – expressed her frustration in the data available in the AWS invoice. She said, “we needed to be able to attach costs to certain projects and control the associated responsibility for those costs by team or by project.”

The Solution

Driven by rising AWS costs, the Director of Operational Services tasked the team with finding a solution that both controlled costs and the needed self-service of a global operation. To ease the burden on the team and allow broader access to AWS instances within the company, the solution needed to allow for management responsibility to be passed to the development/test teams.

Through their research they found ParkMyCloud, which met both cost control and user governance requirements.

When ParkMyCloud was initially described to the director, who had previously worked for utility companies, he immediately understood the analogy ParkMyCloud as a light switch for cloud instances that the “consumer” could switch on and off.

Additionally, the technological simplicity enabled an easy transition of ownership to Metcalfe’s “cost control police” role within Finance. Chan said, “AWS cost control is now a business controlled process rather than an IT one which, is as it should be.”

The Result

Foster Moore implemented ParkMyCloud. Immediately, they established teams within the product and set up an internal process for access to all environments that sit within each team. This way, each team – operations, development, testing, etc. – has the responsibility of managing their own instances, under a single umbrella that gives administrators a single view. Administrators can also view audit logs and pull savings reports.

“As we use ParkMyCloud as the primary access point for AWS instances,” Chan said, “we don’t need other measures to lock down users.”

Foster Moore puts all possible instances on a 24/7 “parked” schedule, with team members given full access to “snooze” this schedule for as long as needed – thereby maximizing parked time and therefore savings.

Foster Moore is now saving 30-40% on their total AWS bill using ParkMyCloud.

Foster Moore implemented ParkMyCloud. Immediately, they established teams within the product and set up an internal process for access to all environments that sit within each team. This way, each team – operations, development, testing, etc. – has the responsibility of managing their own instances, under a single umbrella that gives administrators a single view. Administrators can also view audit logs and pull savings reports.

“As we use ParkMyCloud as the primary access point for AWS instances,” Chan said, “we don’t need other measures to lock down users.”

Foster Moore puts all possible instances on a 24/7 “parked” schedule, with team members given full access to “snooze” this schedule for as long as needed – thereby maximizing parked time and therefore savings.Foster Moore is now saving 30-40% on their total AWS bill using ParkMyCloud.

About Foster Moore

Foster Moore – The Registry People, is an IT company specialising in the development of electronic registries purpose-built to meet the statutory and service needs of legislative and governmental agencies. Learn more at www.fostermoore.com.